There’s no doubt that Android is the most powerful, flexible and
intuitive operating system for smartphone users and perhaps that’s the
reason it has reached a whopping 40% market share worldwide. Everyday
newer and more advanced Android applications are being developed &
released in order to cater to this growing market and since these
applications can be quite demanding, they tend to have an impact on the
speed of Android phones as well. If you feel that your Android phone is
running a bit heavy and has slowed down over time, here are some ways to
speed it up.
1. Remove Widgets
Widgets on the home screen of Android phones such as
clock, calendar, contacts etc. tend to eat up a lot of resources thereby causing the phone to slow down. Especially live widgets that use the internet to update such as
weather widgets etc. have the maximum impact.
It’s best to remove all these widgets and clean up the home screen,
which will have a major impact on the speed of your phone. Here’s how to
remove these widgets from the home screen:
- Tap on the widget and hold it until a trash can appears.
-
Now drag that particular widget to the trash can, following which the
trash can will turn red. The widget will be removed from your home
screen.
2. Remove Unwanted Applications
Just like widgets,
applications also have a major impact on the speed of an Android phone as they
consume a considerable amount of resources.
There is no point in installing a number of applications since they
will keep slowing down your phone. Ideally you should only have those
applications installed on your phone which you use regularly and
remove the ones that are infrequently used. Go through the installed applications on your phone regularly and
uninstall all the unwanted ones.
3. Upgrade to the Latest Firmware
If
you are still running the pre-loaded version of Android on your
smartphone and a more latest Android version is officially available for
update, then you go should go ahead and install it immediately.
Upgrading the firmware will generally result in faster speeds, more stability and some new features as well.
4. Kill Background Apps
At
times there might be some applications that may be running in the
background and consuming system resources unnecessarily. These are
generally the apps that you may have started but forgot to close them
properly so they are still running but not visible to you. While
detecting such apps and killing it is not all that difficult, you can
install free task killer apps like Taskiller or Advanced Task Killer that let you close (kill) all your running applications in one click.
5. Avoid Live Wallpapers
Live wallpapers (the ones that have some sort of animation in them) generally
eat up huge amounts of resources and slow down your Android phone
tremendously. While it may be fun to use these wallpapers and watch
animations liven up your smartphone, they certainly cost a lot in terms
of performance. So it’s
wise to use a static wallpaper rather than installing all those fancy live wallpapers out there.
Did you like this article? Stay tuned for the Part II of
this article in which we’ll cover 5 other ways for speeding up your
Android phone. 
